Compact Synthesizer

Back in the late 1970s, 1977 to be specfic, Yamaha came out with a line of synthesizers grouped together under the moniker "CS" for "Compact Synthesizer". They were certainly compact compared to previous models like the GX-1 which weighed 600kg, but they were still solid, mighty beasts in their own right.

This line started out with the CS-50, CS-60 and legendary CS-80 polyphonic synths, along with the CS-10 and CS-30/CS-30L monophonic synths. This was followed by the stripped down, budget friendly CS-5 and CS-15, then the slightly more computerized CS-15D, CS-20M and CS-40M, all of which were monosynths (with some asterisks) and finally the CS-70M polysynth that effectively ended the series before the DX7 took over.

Of all of these, the CS-40M had piqued my interest the most, as it was natively a duophonic synthesizer, meaning that it had most of the characteristics of a monosynth, but could play two notes at once instead of just one. While some duophonic synths (or duophonic-capable synths like the CS-15) achieved this duophony by splitting a normal two oscillator synth architecture and feeding a different pitch control voltage into each, the CS-40M was more like two fully featured dual-oscillator monosynths glued together. This makes is almost entirely unique in the synthesizer landscape, and few (if any) synths have been made like this since then.

Anyway, as it happens I was browsing around the Japanese auction sites looking to see if a cheap CS-40M might pop up, when I noticed that someone had posted a CS-30 on a 1¥-starting-bid listing. It caught my eye as it looked quite clean, and you never know how these auctions will go, so I bookmarked it and went about my day.

Well, I'm sure you can guess at what happened next.

As claimed in the auction, this synth is in delightful condition, barely showing any signs of its near 50 years of age. It even came with this cool original road case.

And the road case even came with this cool original CS-30.

Oops.

So yeah, what actually happened was that two different sellers listed nearly identical CS-30 auctions, both with 1¥ starting bids, with one of them just so happening to include a road case. I kind of wanted to pick up one of them, but with the conditions being so similar I didn't want to just bid on one, get outbid at the last minute, and not have a chance to bid on the other one, since they were coincidentally ending within 20 minutes of each other (and too early in the morning for me to wake up for it).

The plan I devised was a simple one: I'd just put in an optimistically low bid on both, and then see what happened. Ideally someone would swoop in and buy one and then there just wouldn't be enough interest in these old synths to support two sales at once, so I'd get the other one for a bargain price. But I fully expected to get outbid on both and then continue my search for a CS-40M.

Well, it turns out that I guess I have a bit more optimism than Japanese synth hunters, and yeah, I ended up with both.

Luckily even with the shipping cost (They're 33lb each not including the road case. Le ouch) these still came out way cheaper than what I would have paid to pick one up domestically, so I'm quite happy with how things turned out.

That said, these are Japanese units, so they're wired for 100v. Let's have a quick look inside to see if we can do something about that.

These old Yamahas are really a work of art.

And yup, there's the yellow 100v tap and the brown 120v tap, just like it shows in the service manual.

So nothing to it but to do it!

I actually have some more plans for things to do inside this beast... or, well, these beasts. But that's an adventure for a future post.

I'm Ready For My Closeup

One thing you might not consider in every day life is the fact that cameras have a limited focus range. Generally on the far end they'll focus out to infinity (which is to say, parallel light rays will end up focused to a point, at least within the basic limitations of the optics), but on the near end they can often be quite limited when you really want to get in close to something.

Now if you have something like an iPhone you might just be stuck with whatever optical system it came with, or maybe you might try a stick-on adapter lens or something. But when we venture back to the olden days of standalone cameras, we start to get some real options.

Like, for example, close-up adapters.

If I were to try to take a picture of the label on this box with just the regular 14-42 zoom lens on this camera, I'd get something like this.

Yes, I took a close-up picture, but it's obviously violently out of focus, so not particularly useful. But if I add one of the close-up adapters, things start to look much more clear.

This is using the +10 diopter adapter, which, if no other lenses are involved, will focus at 1/10th of a meter. The lens on my camera claims it'll focus at 1/5th of a meter, so +5, and adding the two together gives us a new minimum focus of 1/15th of a meter. So that means going down from 20cm to 6.66cm.

Things are a bit less dramatic with the other adapters, which yield a combined minimum distance of 1/6, 1/7, and 1/9 meters (16.6cm, 14cm, 11.1cm respectively). But the bonus with them is that the maximum focal distance is much less compromised, because remember that the main lens only goes out to infinity, or 0 diopters, so the maximum focal distance is 1m, 50cm, 25cm and 10cm with the adapters. That means that if I only had the +10 diopter, I'd end up with a gap between 20cm and 10cm where I wouldn't be able to focus at all, but the +4 bridges that gap, and the other two give different options of focus lengths depending on the situation I'm in. For example, if I were taking photos of flowers I might want the +1 or +2 to be able to take some close up pics and some wide pics.

Anyway, the kit comes with a nifty carrying case and some lens wipes, so that's cool.

And the lenses themselves apparently have an antireflective optical coating, which is definitely helpful for reducing lens flares.

As a practical demonstration, let's try taking a picture of a PCB out of a Yamaha Reface DX. Because I happen to have one of those handy. Here's as close as I can get with just the regular lens.

Like sure, you can see stuff, and if you crop in you can get some pretty good detail, but you can't really make out what all the surface mount components are.

Adding the +1 adapter gets us a bit closer.

It's in no way a dramatic difference, but still gets things a bit closer.

Moving to the +2, things are starting to get closer still.

This is starting to look like a proper close-up photo.

And naturally, +4 brings things even closer.

And then +10, the closest of all.

With the obvious downside being that at this level of zoom the depth of focus is really quite tight. I actually had to take this picture 4 times to get the focal plane just right, as moving the camera even a few mm back and forth would shift the focus quite dramatically.

Oh yeah, speaking of the camera, I picked up a Lumix GF5.

It's entirely in Japanese, because they lock down the language packs to discourage cross-market shopping. So I guess that year of Japanese language study at university finally paid off. I actually picked this up a few months ago, but I couldn't figure out a good context to introduce it. So, here it is. It's pretty fun and delightfully tiny.

More Like Desic-Can

3D printer filament is peculiar stuff. It's plastic, so you'd think it would be impervious to water, but in fact quite the opposite is the case: it can, and will, absorb water straight out of the air. This can have a variety of effects, the most alarming of which is that if you let PLA filament absorb too much water, it'll suddenly become incredibly brittle and can spontaneously shatter just due to internal stresses. Less dramatic but no less annoying, this absorbed moisture will also boil out of the filament when it's heated up for extrusion, bubbling out the nozzle and causing all sorts of havoc for the print quality.

I'd been getting along fine with just relying on ziplock bags and little desiccant pouches, but I was about to break into a roll of TPU filament (a flexible thermoplastic urethane) which is highly sensitive to moisture, so I figured it was time to up my game.

And so my game is now upped.

There's just one teensy problem...

Where the fuck am I supposed to put it?

Well in the meantime it at least fits the roll of TPU that's been sitting in my drawer for about 10 years now.

So I'll just go ahead and stick it back in the ziplock bag that it came out of, which I unsealed only moments ago.

Oh. Well, so much for that bag, I guess.

Anyway, I'm clearly going to need some sort of mounting solution so I can strap this filament dryer to the side of my printer. First things first, I'm going to need some 2020 t-nuts.

It's a good thing I have a 3D printer.

Hot off the printer, the threads just need a little tidying up.

But if I'm being completely honest, I'm not sure I'm liking how these t-nuts are fitting in the 2020 extrusion.

I tried modifying the profile a little and re-printed them, and then realized that I forgot to export the updated model when I sliced and printed them again, and you know what on second thought it's a good thing I have an Amazon Prime account.

Anyway, let's get the frame printed up, this should just be a simple matter of...

Ok apparently I'm having bed adhesion problems now. After a bit of head-scratching I figured out that I'd somehow set the bed temp to 60c, which is way too low for PETG to adhere. It really sticks better with temps more like 90c.

So that print goes in the bin and let's try again.

Well that's looking a bit better, other than some snot blobs that got stuck in the print.

Which is always a risk with longer prints (this print took over 6 hours).

Anyway, one of the reasons that the previous print failed was that the brim was not sticking to the print to help hold it down. In fact, the brim isn't even sticking to itself, which is a problem I have yet to fully diagnose and resolve.

I'm starting to think that OrcaSlicer has some bugs in its extrusion profile modelling that's causing it to print lines in the brim (and in walls, for that matter) too far apart for them to properly adhere.

Well anyway, the parts themselves turned out decently this time.

And luckily it fits the filament dryer.

So now I just have to mount it to the printer, and wouldn't you know it, the t-nuts are here.

And as you can see they work so much bett-

Hmm, that's peculiar, they're not going in. I wonder what's up with that, they're supposed to drop right into that channel.

Well that's clearly not going to work. I guess it's time to print out the actual updated t-nut model I made.

And you know, I think they actually worked out pretty well. No complaints. (at least not until this falls off in the middle of the night, or during a long print. Possibly both at once)

But about that TPU, let's get the temperature dialled in.

And check the pressure advance setting, since it's a softer filament.

And actually it's printing pretty much just like PETG, except softer, so I'll skip the rest of the calibration and jump to the main event.

Well the brim still isn't working right, but the print was successful, so I'll take it.

And it matches the part I'm duplicating, which is a foot from this little black box of mystery. I just need to push it into the little squish-fit hole in the bottom and...

Oh, I guess this TPU is a bit less squishy than I thought. Well, let's try that again.

There we go, that one squished into place nice and secure.

Well that's another job well done, though I'll still need to figure out this weird brim situation. But that can wait for another day.

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Ain't On Fire

So it's about time I got a new roof. It's been leaking somewhat ever since I moved in, but the water wasn't damaging anything meaningful so I just let it slide until I felt like getting around with it. Given we've got the El Niño of the century aimed directly at us this winter, I figured now was the time.

First things first, it's off with the solar.

I can't very well replace the roof with all those panels in the way, after all. This part of the replacement did, however, turn into a bit of an ordeal because the panels were leased, and thus technically "not mine". The service company blessed by the leasing company wanted something like $12k to do a "remove and reset" to which I said "fuck you and your lease" and bought it out for around $10k. The roofers I hired only wanted $6k for the R&R part and now I no longer have a solar panel lease bill every month, so that turned out pretty sweet.

The panels got stashed in the back patio, along with the racking, though as it turned out they couldn't reuse the racking so it could have just gone straight in the bin, but whatever.

Next up, or down as the case may be, the roof came off.

I had originally thought there was only one layer of roofing, but curiously there was actually two layers, but when they added the second layer they removed the first layer over the eaves, which is why the water leaks never got inside but instead just rotted out the eave boards in the front. Weird.

This is, of course, why I painted a bunch of new v-groove previously. It's way, way easier to paint it when it's down on the ground vs when it's on the underside of an eave.

Anyway, it's time for some roofing materials, delivered to the roof.

The delivery guys got delayed and barely made it into the driveway before dark, and ended up unloading most of the material in pitch black. Thankfully they managed to avoid falling off and dying.

With the new sheathing and underlay up, things are starting to take shape.

And it's time for more materials, this time at a more decent hour.

And then you assemble the rest of the roof.

But the work isn't over yet (well, technically it is, as I took this picture after everything was done but never mind that). The gable boards need a coat of paint, since they've got brand new not-quite-white flashing on them, and brand new definitely-not-white trim boards replacing the old molding that would have looked weird under the new, larger flashing.

So some primer is in order for the flashing, at least the unprimed stuff around the flat roof.

And some trim paint to go on top. I tried the magic super duper life hack of putting painters tape on the rim while pouring.

And it worked!

Once, at least. The second time I tried it, the tape lifted and the whole rim got full of paint. Waste of tape, this is.

Anyway, the vessel I poured this paint into is my new painting bucket, which has a comfortable hand strap and a magnet to hold onto the ferrule of the brush.

So that makes the job a lot easier than hauling a gallon bucket up and down the ladder.

And the best part is that when you're done, you just pour the remaining paint back in the original paint can and then wait for the paint in the bucket to dry and peel it off, which definitely isn't a scam to get you to ruin the bucket by drying a layer of paint onto it that doesn't-

Oh, actually it does work. Ok.

Well, while I'm in a painting mood, one thing that's bothered me about my house is that the wall below the water table trim on the front of the car hole was painted the blue-grey instead of the two-tone red.

So, no better time than now to fix that, since I still have about half a bucket of the red accent paint.

Hmm, well, it's a good thing I have a paint mixer attachment for my drill.

There, good as new.

Coat number one goes on.

And no paint covers in one coat, so here's what it looks like after the requisite second.

Pretty snazzy, if you ask me. I know you didn't but I will opine regardless, and you'll just have to deal with it.

All told, this whole adventure cost me under $40k, and I'm pretty happy with the results.